Edit 29/9/2015: Re: the comment added today from Steve Moore (see below) it looks like we can, at the very least, expect some typo and space corrections.

#1Steve Moore2015-09-29 15:59I've just learned that the new edition will correct about twenty typos and space issues. I submitted a list to Michael Pietsch a while back; he said a few typos had been corrected in a recent printing, and the rest will be made for this deluxe edition.

Location Update: A few of us will be meeting at The Victoria Hotel (215 Little Collins Street) in Vics's Bar and Pool Room from 7pm on Sat 28th Nov 2015. Last minute updates or changes via twitter @nick_maniatis (or check the sidebar on the left!) I'll tweet when I'm there. Feel free to just rock up and introduce yourself. Every single time I've met people who have read ANY David Foster Wallace has been a chilled and fine occasion. We're all good people.

If you don't know what I look like keep an eye out for the group of people including a guy with glasses near a 1st Edition Hardback of Infinite Jest. That should be obvious enough...

A few of us will be meeting up on Saturday 28th Nov in the Melbourne CBD at around 7pm for some Wallace discussion over drinks and nibbles. If any other Melbourne Wallace enthusiasts would like to join us we'd love to meet you!

Location TBA later this week (Thurs or Friday). If you can come along (or think you might be able to) drop me a line here (or leave a comment below) and I'll make sure you get the specifics.

Update: I'm all packed. Heading to Melbourne on Saturday for the meetup and to see this panel on Monday!

I can't wait for the 30th of November because I'll be in Melbourne to attend the ‘Ghost Stories, Love Stories, New Stories: Reconfiguring David Foster Wallace for the Australian Academy’ panel at the AAWP 2015 Conference - Writing the ghost train | Rewriting, remaking, rediscovering (Draft conference program here).

The panel will be moderated by Tony McMahon who you may recall from guest pieces he wrote for The Howling Fantods from Paris (where he delivered this paper) and DFW2015 in the US:

Across the last two decades, the oeuvre of the American writer David Foster Wallace (1962 – 2008) has attracted significant attention in both academic and mainstream cultural circles; unique to Wallace, though, is the degree to which these two spheres overlap. Readers of Wallace’s literary work also consume scholarly assessments of it, providing a large, diverse audience for such criticism. Adam Kelly has written that, in contrast to the critical discourse on James Joyce, for example, ‘where the keys to understanding are presumed to be held by professional scholars’, the formal study of Wallace’s work ‘has begun in a more democratic vein’. While this is largely due to the influence of the Internet as a social technology, it also reflects the deep analytical and creative connections between Wallace’s texts and their readers.

Consequently, Wallace Studies has rapidly emerged as a coherent research discipline, with its own tenets, tropes and dogmas. Following his death and the publication of posthumous texts such as The Pale King (2011) and Both Flesh and Not (2012), as well as D.T. Max’s biography Every Love Story is a Ghost Story (2012), the academic pursuit of Wallace’s writing has seemed to approach consensus on matters of aesthetics, poetics and canonicity. There are, however, meaningful problems that still require attention.

The panel responds to this need by providing a new context for the critical reading of Wallace. Through the assessment of existing discourse, it clears the ground for a refined theorisation of Wallace’s literary corpus. The panel will feature a mix of emerging and established scholars, each of whom will present rigorous new approaches to Wallace and Wallace Studies: Tony McMahon will argue for the academic consideration of Wallace within Australian academic discourse; Mitch Cunningham confronts the ambiguous subject of the ‘reader’ in Wallace’s texts; Matilda Douglas-Henry (re)reads Infinite Jest as a queer allegory, while Jonathan Laskovsky assesses the construction of fictional space in that novel; finally, Joshua Barnes’ attempts to theorise the comedic techniques employed by Wallace throughout his work.

Emphasising the creative importance of retransmitting stories through teaching and learning, the panel will comprise teachers and students—from undergraduate to PhD—each responding to the theme of ‘writing the ghost train’ by focusing on the representation of Wallace’s work to new readers, contexts and generations. Furthermore, the panel will explicitly discuss thematic stream four, ‘Refashioning the self’, with Wallace’s literary project providing the ideal environment in which to explore the effects of reconfiguring texts, retelling stories and the process of canon formation.

Panel Presenters/Topics:

Tony McMahon (moderator): Introduction: Why Wallace and Australia?

Mitch Cunningham: ‘Performing the fiction-writer’s reader: Reading the transference in David Foster Wallace’

Matilda Douglas-Henry: ‘“The Man Who Knows His Limitations Has None”: The homoeroticism in Infinite Jest’

The first half of Newstalk radio's 23rd of November 2015 episode of Talking Books has Susan Cahill talking with Tim Groenland of Trinity College Dublin and Dr Marshall Boswell about the life, writings, and legacy of David Foster Wallace.

Absolutely worth listening to, “He was not a writer who believed in wrapping his plots up in neat little bows” – Tim Groenland - Introductory article here (Note that you might need to complete a one question Google survey to access the written piece).